Donate Now: The Tom Robbins Investigative Reporting Fund

Tom Robbins’ death last year in 2025 at age 76 robbed New York City of its dean of investigative reporters.

No one, of course, can replace him. But you can help fill the gap in the kind of hard-hitting journalism he practiced by supporting the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY students Robbins long-mentored with your tax-deductible contribution to the Tom Robbins Investigative Reporting Fund.

The goal is to fund summer investigative internships for standout students for years to come at two local nonprofit news sites: City Limits, where Robbins started his reporting career, and THE CITY, where he capped it.

Student applicants will be vetted by a committee that will include top journalists, J-School faculty and members of Robbins’ family, who started the fund in conjunction with the journalism school. Selected summer interns will each receive $10,000 stipends while earning valuable experience and top-notch guidance at these widely respected accountability reporting outlets dear to Tom.

The internships will help position students for careers following in Robbins’ vaunted footsteps at a time when reporting that holds power to account is needed more than ever. Over some 45 years, he made headlines in The Village Voice, the Daily News, The Marshall Project, The New York Times and other outlets.

Robbins brought the same passion to training journalists as he did to chasing mobsters and crooked politicians, spending the last 14 years of his life and career guiding students as the J-School’s Investigative Reporter in Residence.

Newmark J-School, which opened in 2006, is a public graduate journalism school that prepares students from diverse economic, racial, and cultural backgrounds to produce high-quality journalism. The work of 15 alumni has been recognized by the Pulitzer Prizes. In 2024, the school launched a campaign to provide free tuition, in perpetuity, to all of its students.

Contributions to the fund will help launch the inaugural internships in 2027 and carry forward Tom Robbins’ commitment to accountability journalism through the next generation. You can support the fund here:

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